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Blueberry Lemon Verbena Galette

Everyone loves pie. The mom.me team loves pie, but we sometimes struggle with baking the perfect pie, and resort to the store-bought variety. That was, until, we received a copy of Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour & Butter by Kate Lebo. Now that we're pupils in her school of pie, we've been cooking up delicious fruit and nut pies every night of the week. Her no-nonsense approaching to teaching, her poetic language, and swoon-worthy fillings make this a delightful and delicious read.

This galette owes its invention to a classic fruit pairing, and to a lemon verbena plant I adopted one summer. The result is a blueberry-lemon flavor with a trace of floral herbiness—the sort of pie that seems familiar and strange at the same time.

Make the dough. Let it rest in the refrigerator for an hour while you
prepare the next steps of the recipe.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

In a large bowl, mix the blueberries, granulated sugar, lemon juice,
salt, and lemon verbena. Taste and adjust salt and sweet as necessary. Add the
flour and butter and stir to combine. Set the filling aside.

Retrieve the dough from
the refrigerator. On a floured surface, roll it out into about an 1⁄8-inch
round. It will be large— 14 inches, maybe bigger. (The dough doesn’t need to be
perfectly round, but it lays better in the pan if it is roundish.) Trim the
edges or patch the dough as needed to make it more round. Fold the dough into
fourths, transfer it to the pan, and unfold it, tucking the dough gently into
the edges of the pan. Let the excess drape over the edge of the pan.

Pour the filling into the dough. Grab some of the excess dough and pull
it toward the center of the galette. Grab another spot about three or four
inches down and pull it toward the center, continuing until you have used all
the dough to create a soft ruffle of crust surrounding a juicy blue center.
Brush the dough with the egg white wash, and sprinkle it with the demerara
sugar.

Bake the galette in the middle of the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until
the crust is blistered and blond. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F. Bake for 35
to 45 minutes more, until the crust is deeply golden and the juices bubble
slowly at the galette's edge.

Cool on a wire rack for
at least an hour. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store leftovers on the
kitchen counter loosely wrapped in a towel for up to 3 days.

RECIPE: Galette Dough

Yields 1 bottom crust

¼ cup sour cream or room temperature cream cheese (see note)

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ cup cold water

1¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick)
well-chilled butter

Note: If you use cream cheese, amend my
instructions for preparing the liquid as follows: In a 2-cup spouted liquid
measuring cup, whisk the cream cheese thoroughly with ¼ cup hot (but not
boiling) water. There should be absolutely no lumps. Whisk in the lemon juice.
Put it in the freezer while you prepare the next steps of the recipe. The idea
is to have the liquid at a very cold temperature, not to actually freeze it.

Whisk the sour cream, lemon juice, and water in a 2-cup spouted liquid
measuring cup and put it in the freezer while you prepare the next steps of the
recipe. The idea is to have the liquid at a very cold temperature, not to
actually freeze it.

In a medium bowl, mix the flour and salt. Cut the butter into ½- to
1-tablespoon-size pieces and drop them into the flour. Toss the fat with the
flour to evenly distribute it.

Position your hands palms up, fingers loosely curled. Scoop up flour and
fat and rub it between your thumb and fingers, letting it fall back into the
bowl after rubbing. Do this, reaching into the bottom and around the sides to
incorporate all the flour into the fat until the mixture is slightly yellow,
slightly damp. It should be chunky—mostly pea-size with a handful of
almond-size pieces and a few the size of cherries. The rest of the flour/butter
mixture should look like coarse cornmeal.

Take the liquid out of the freezer. Pour it in a steady thin stream
around the bowl for about 5 seconds. Toss everything lightly a few times. If
you’d like a flakier crust, stop adding liquid when the dough just coheres. If
you’d like a tender crust, pour most of the rest of the liquid in a thin stream
over the dough, each time stopping after about 5 seconds to toss and distribute
the liquid. The dough should hold together (no puffs of dry flour) and feel a
little wet. Expect it to feel much wetter than American pie dough, but not so
wet that it’s like batter. The dough should hold together easily in a ball. Add
the rest of the liquid, if needed.

With firm, brief
pressure, gather the dough into a ball. Quickly form the dough into a thick
disk using your palms and thumbs. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for
at least an hour or up to 3 days before rolling.